OIL: Join the Enemy

Oakey L. Alexander, president of Virginia's
Pocahontas Fuel Co., Inc., shocked his friends last week as much, he
said, as if "Harry Truman had joined the Young Republican Club." The
boss of one of the biggest U.S. soft-coal producers went into the oil
business. With California Oil Co., a subsidiary of Standard of
California, Pocahontas plans to spend about $1,500,000 building an oil
terminal at Portland, Me. The 192,000-bbl. terminal will be supplied by
Cal-Standard tankers.

Pocahontas is going into a competing business, said Alexander, because
"our customers are thoroughly disgusted with interruptions year after
year because of [John L.] Lewis'...